With the modern day increased emphasis upon physical fitness, more and more people have turned to jogging as a means of keeping themselves reasonably fit. Jogging has increased tremendously as a means of physical fitness improvement because of the relatively short time required for completion of the exercise, the fact that jogging can be done alone without the need for assembling a team of personnel, and the fact that jogging can be accomplished almost anywhere.
Much jogging is done on indoor tracks, particularly when the weather is not suitable for outdoor jogging. Individuals using indoor jogging tracks often desire to jog their predetermined distance within a defined period of time. For example, many joggers set as a goal an 8-minute mile. To attain an 8-minute mile, the jogger must maintain a relatively constant pace of jogging each quarter mile in about two minutes. While some joggers utilize a stop watch in order to pace themselves and to accomplish their desired objective of reaching their predetermined distance in a set period of time, this has often proved unhandy. One of the disadvantages of carrying a stop watch is the very fact that the jogger must in fact carry the stop watch with him while jogging. In addition, the stop watch must be read during the jogging activity in order to determine whether or not the jogger is in fact keeping at or near his desired pace. Moreover, as is known by anyone who has ever jogged, it is not easy to read a stop watch while jogging. In addition, it is often easy for a jogger to forget the number of laps he has jogged around the track. There is, therefore, a need for a convenient means for joggers to pace themselves.
The object of this invention is to satisfy the need of joggers for a convenient method of pacing themselves. In particular, an object of this invention is to provide a means for joggers to pace themselves which does not interfere with the jogging track or obstruct the use of the jogging track.
Another object of this device is to provide a means of pacing joggers which projects a light directly onto the jogging track and uniformly moves that light along the jogging surface of the track to provide a pace setting spot of light.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a pace setting spot of light on a jogging track which moves at a designated predetermined rate of speed in order to pace the jogger.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a pace setting device for joggers which has an associated timer switch which stops the movement of the beam of light around the jogging surface after the spot of light has moved a predetermined number of movements along the jogging path.
The method of accomplishing these and other objects will become apparent from the detailed description of the invention which follows.